Interviewer: What do you get out of reading comic books? Kyle: Just happiness. Just is a joy. There is a collectible aspect to it that I like. I like picking up a book, reading it, enjoying the story, enjoying the artwork, and then having it, kind of like forever. Maybe. Maybe I'll trade it for a different story or sell it for a profit to get even more stories. There is an aspect to that I like. It's the same with toys and having a collection. I guess comics are one of the older things that people have collected. It's become sort of a collectible type thing, to own it for years and years and years and watch the value of it go up. And then suddenly you've got this thing that was once just a 10 cent, you know, some pulpy paper, a shiny Tag Heuer Replica Watches(http://www.kopeez.com/B-Replica-Tag-Heuer-Watches-65.html) cover and some staples, you know, two staples, and it was a dime or a quarter, and all of a sudden it's a down payment on a car. And it's, not everything's going to be like that, but there is some kind of a fascination about owning what you read. And it goes for novels as well. I like having it as well. I am not a big library guy. I don't check out a lot of books. I like to own. Kyle's description of what he got out of reading comic books exhibited joy, aesthetic appreciation, and also a tactile pleasure of ownership. These pleasant sensations were also coupled with an eye to economic concerns, including recognition of market value and a manner of determining worth and engaging in exchanges. Kyle associated a confluence of discourses with his comic-book reading, and his descriptions spoke to his amassing wealth both in the form of positive experiences and material objects. The "collectible aspect" Kyle mentioned positioned him as a consumer who went to the market in search of specific feelings and goods. He described having a particular affinity or Batman because of his own career training to be a detective, and this personal connection pointed to the multiple definitions of ownership his reading practices entailed. Kyle described a source of value for comic books: low evocative particular narratives could be. Part if what Kyle described being attractive about com-: books was that they gave him the chance to read a great story," to the point where the art in a particular comic book became "less and less important D me." Kyle's consumption of comic books was not merely speculating (Pustz, 1999); he was not buying comic books to appreciate in value and not to read hem, although he was definitely aware of the process f appreciation and sometimes took advantage of it. le wanted to own stories that particularly touched, loved, or excited him. He was consciously thinking bout buying specific comic books that he wanted to own in a form where it was easier to revisit them. Kyle described buying individual comic books ad then sometimes selling them to get those same issues in the collected form of a trade paperback, le spoke of multiple comic-book stories that he waned and had revisited on a regular basis, including The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller, 1986, DC Comics), The Watchmen (Alan Moore, 1986, DC comics), Batman: Year One (Frank Miller, 1987, DC Ernies), and Kingdom Come (Mark Waid, 1996, DC comics). Kyle described himself as a reader with disarming tastes who collected a certain caliber of texts lat met with his approval. Doing so, he demonstrated is own hierarchy of value and standards. He was a self-admitted snob. Kyle used a capitalist discourse to speak about is comic-book reading. As goods that have been Dllected and traded "for the past several gunpersons," comic books have their own economy and a preexisting market. As such, collecting was tied to addition where value was determined by collector interest, rarity, and landmark events (Pustz, 1999). yle's use of comic books was in part tied up in their autos as collectible objects. What could be worth-while about reading comic books was that sometimes icy appreciated in value and could be sold to ob-in other goods. For Kyle, those goods were typically other comic books, but he was also aware of instances Breitling Replica Watches(http://www.bestwatches4u.com/breitling-c-104.html) where certain comic books were worth amounts of money comparable to the down payment on a car. Kyle spoke about this transformation as being almost alchemical, with a small amount of base materialâ€""pulpy paper" and "shiny staples" sold for a pittanceâ€"becoming a valuable treasure. Kyle treated texts as commodities in talking of his decisions to either keep or trade away particular comic books. His use of comic books as prized possessions was twofold; he enjoyed owning the physical items but valued the experiences he associated with a good story as well.
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